Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Release Blitz: Aflame by Penelope Douglas

The tables have turned. Now I have the power—and it’s his turn to beg…

Everyone wants to be me.

Maybe it’s the sway of my skirt or the way I flip my hair, but I don’t care. Even though their attention is the last thing I crave, I just can’t stop. I dominate the track, the speed rattles my bones, and the wind and the crowd screams my name.

I’m her. The girl driver. The queen of the race. And I’m surviving—something he thought I’d never do.

They all talk about him. Did you see Jared Trent on T.V? What did you think of his last race, Tate? When is he coming back to town, Tate?

But I refuse to care too much. Because when Jared does come home, I won’t be here.

For two years Tate has unsuccessfully tried to get Jared Trent out of her mind. But he’s everywhere even when he’s nowhere near her. At first she closed herself off from everyone. She focused on school and even stopped coming home on the weekends. She tried to move on. She tried to date. She tried not to follow Jared’s career. She tried. But she failed. Now she has her routine down. School, work and racing at the Loop. She took something that belonged to Jared and made it her own. Racing gives her power, makes her feel strong and in control. When Jared comes home unexpectedly Tate is thrown into a tailspin of emotions that threaten to consume her. Part of her wants to run to him, devour him the other wants to inflict lots of pain on him and give him a taste of his own medicine.

In the two years Jared has been away there has not been one second of one day that he has not wanted Tate. He left her so he could be better for her, be a man, but he never stopped loving her. He’s spent his time away making a name for himself on the racing circuit and constructing a plan to open his own business. When he decided to come back he knew it was too late, he waited too long and he doesn’t have any expectations of even seeing her, until he does. Seeing Tate again puts everything in perspective for Jared. But Tate isn’t the same girl he left behind two years ago. She is different, colder, distant. Jared has his work cut out for him, because this time around Tate has the wheel and Jared is not used to being in the passenger seat. Jared knows his girl is still in there somewhere and he plans on finding her, and then reminding her who she belongs to.

“Everything flooded back. Every breath, every kiss, every smile, every tear, everything about her was mine.”

Tate worked so hard trying to find her place in the world without Jared. And now he is back and threatening to send her back to where she was before. She doesn’t trust herself around him because no matter how much she tries to deny it she never stopped loving him. The problem is she can’t trust him. He abandoned her twice already and she is afraid to let her guard down to him again. But Jared is relentless when it comes to making his intentions known to her, and the more he pushes the more she feels her resolve crumbling.

“There was no one but him, and even when he wasn’t around he was. I would never be free of him because-- I didn’t want to be.”

Knowing that Tate still loves him is one thing, getting her to admit it, is something else entirely. But Jared refuses to give up, he has every intention of being with Tate for the rest of his life. Convincing her that he is in this for the long haul is not easy though. There is still a lot of hurt and resentment between them. The journey to their happy ending depends entirely on them relinquishing the pain from their past and embracing the inevitability of their future.

“….I only lived in her orbit, and I would die there, too. There was no choice to be made.”

We got the first part of Tate and Jared’s story in Bully, then we got Fallon and Madoc’s, Then Juliet and Jax’s. Now we have come full circle as we get the conclusion to Tate and Jared’s story as well as the ending of this series. It’s no secret that this series is one of my top, if not, my favorite series. I was waiting on pins and needles after reading the ending in Falling Away. I wanted this book so bad and then I didn’t want it at all. I was so afraid to read it but my gosh, am I so glad I did. This book blew me away. It was such an unexpected surprise and I loved every single word on every single page.

The character dynamic change so worked and I loved seeing a different side to Tate that we haven’t been privy to before. She was just the right amount of both strength and vulnerability. But to be honest this book was all Jared for me. My God. In Bully I loved to hate him, but in Aflame??? His unwavering love for Tate, everything he does for her, because of her. I swooned a million times over. I was so happy to see the growth in his character and especially the absence of all the excess women in his life. I’m also so glad they still have that heat between them. From the first book Jared and Tate have always had this all-consuming, unwavering heat between them. They didn’t even to be to touching or even be in the same room, yet the connection was still there. The passion, the intensity, the angst, God this book was sooo good. There is only one thing I hated about it and that is that it ended. ☹

The best part of this series for me has always been how with each book you grow to love all of the characters more and more. Madoc, Fallon, Jax and Juliet all play an equal part in this book and we get to see how they have grown as well over the last two years. I absolutely loved Madoc here and it’s crazy to see how far he has come from Bully.

The epilogue was everything I hoped it would be and more and I would love, love love it if later on she revisited this series again. I’m going to miss every single one of them so very much and I am so sad to say good-bye and that this is the conclusion. Thank you Penelope for creating a story that makes the reader cry when it is over. I cannot wait to immerse myself into the next world you create, I’m sure it will be just as great of a ride.

“I exist as I am, that is enough.”

Books in the Fall Away Series

About Penelope Douglas

Penelope Douglas is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Fall Away series. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration from the University of Northern Iowa and a Master of Science in Education from Loyola University in New Orleans. Penelope lives in Las Vegas with her family.